


take up the gauntlet

by nubbins_for_all



Series: Winter isn't goin' nowhere [5]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: And so they like to stab things, Everyone is bored, Fun and Games, Like they usually do on GOT, Multi, but this time the pregnant lady STABS BACK
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-04
Updated: 2019-09-04
Packaged: 2020-09-27 06:41:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20403364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nubbins_for_all/pseuds/nubbins_for_all
Summary: A short interlude during a nasty ice storm. The folks at Winterfell get antsy, and they can't have a tourney outside, so...





	take up the gauntlet

**Author's Note:**

> Set anywhere between Chapter 6 and 7 of "And Counting."
> 
> This is cracky and ridiculous and I shall not apologize.

“This is ridiculous.”

“That’s the whole point,” Arya insists, half-shouting through the clamor of voices and the squawk of music. It feels as though the entire population of the castle has crammed itself into the main hall, which is probably the case, because the phrase “indoor tourney” is certainly enough to catch most people’s attention. Even Brienne’s, pregnant and exhausted as she is.

“Are people going to try _jousting_ in here?” she asks, half-joking and half-dreading a sincere answer. Arya laughs and takes a gulp of mead, shaking her head.

“That’s always a possibility, but I don’t remember anyone ever bothering to try and get horses into the hall. My father usually kept it to four-man melees and individual bouts, anything else gets too rowdy and then you wind up with broken tables.”

Brienne shakes her head, trying to imagine a childhood where large hairy Northmen would regularly enter your home and clash with swords in your dining hall and break the tables where you ate breakfast. But according to Arya, it wasn’t an uncommon occurrence during bad weather, and they’d heard many stories of other indoor tourneys from the winters before they were born.

_Ah, the North._

The tables and benches have all been dragged to the far edges of the hall and some stacked on top of each other, creating short, unsteady bleachers that Brienne has steered quite clear of. Ale and mead are flowing, at least as much as they can be during winter rationing, and there’s warm bread and meat, and people are laughing and chattering, which is what Lady Sansa and Lord Snow seemed to have been aiming for with this. After two weeks of near-constant high-speed winds that ripped shutters off window and pushed down fences, followed by an ice storm three nights ago that had the entire castle shivering and ruined a number of vegetables patches, the inhabitants of the miniature city that Winterfell has become are in low spirits. A night of something fun and distracting does seem overdue, and Lady Sansa is very cognizant of her responsibilities in that department.

“My mother always said that the work of lords and ladies is not to tell the smallfolk how to live their lives,” Sansa had told Brienne once, early on, “but to remind them of the larger life we live together as one people, the one that sustains through winter and summer both.”

Lady Sansa wants her people to endure, to brace their bodies and souls against the burden of winter and not break. If an indoor tourney gives them the fortitude to make it through another ice storm, then by all means, break out the ale and strike up the tune.

Which is exactly what’s happening now, though Brienne can’t say if she likes the music or not. It’s a band of five Wildlings, Tormund among them, playing horns and harps and lutes and then a couple things she doesn’t recognize, hidebound drums and pitted flutes and something that definitely looks like it’s made out of bones. The music is rough and fast, like a winter wind, and it sets her slightly on edge. In the south, music for entertainment tends to be much sweeter and lighter, something to which highborn men and women can move gracefully in their floaty silks. Even the shanties on Tarth were gentler than this Northern rhythm.

But the Northmen themselves seem to love it, even Lady Sansa, who laughs and claps along with a particularly aggressive number that begins with Tormund blowing into a horn while simultaneously banging away on a small set of bonded drums. For once, Brienne is glad she’s seven months pregnant and can’t see her feet, as it gives her a very good excuse to sit in a corner with a mug of warm goat’s milk and not get involved in the dancing or the shouting or the general cacophony. Their little group is still coalescing, with Jaime and Pod and Davos off on a quest to bring back food and Arya perched on the table by Brienne’s side, sending Gendry to refill her cup when it empties and eyeing his backside as he walks away.

Brienne can see Lady Sansa up at the head table with Jon Snow, both of them smiling wider than they have in months. Lord Snow seems to have finally recovered from the departure of the Dragon Queen, his good humor making itself known for the first time in all the time Brienne’s known him, and he and Samwell Tarly are laughing together like boys. The Hound stands behind her lady, skulking and huge, and Brienne doesn’t like it when he gets that close but it’s far from the first time it’s bugged her and she’s finally accepted that currently she can’t do anything about it.

“When’s somebody going to have a real fight?” Arya groans, draining the mead from her cup. There have been a few skirmishes between younger boys and a few drunkards, and two melees between four or five people that featured the interesting use of a chair as a weapon, but so far the tourney itself doesn’t seem to have gathered much steam. It’s more of a big party, which is fine on its own, but the energy in the room has a rowdy undertone. People came here to let off steam, and drinking and dancing only lets off so much.

“You want a fight, you start one,” says Gendry as he appears at Arya’s shoulder, holding another full cup of mead. She glances back at him, a spark of affection in those cold grey eyes, and then at Brienne.

“What do you think, Ser Brienne? Should we begin the bouts?”

“You may do as you wish,” Brienne says with one eyebrow raised. Arya sets her mouth in that obstinate way she has and hops off the table, hands on her hips as she glares at Brienne.

“Don’t tell me you’re going to sit it all out.”

“I’m the size of the North Tower and my ankles are like overstuffed sausages,” Brienne informs her, as though all of that weren’t evident on sight alone. But Arya rolls her eyes and shakes her head.

“Pregnant women work in the fields and sail on ships and run away from soldiers every day. You’re Ser Brienne of Tarth, are you going to tell me you’re too much in the family way to try a tourney bout with this lot? You could whip them all with your hands behind your back.”

“I—I don’t think so, my lady,” Brienne stutters, taken aback, because Arya’s words do sting a bit, they strike at the place in Brienne’s mind where she’s been thinking _soft, soft, getting too soft,_ _aren’t I supposed to be a knight,_ and even as Arya scoffs and turns and marches off into the crowd, Brienne feels something she hasn’t felt in a long time: competitive.

Good as her word, Arya gets the bouts going for real, brandishing Needle in the middle of the floor and loudly declaring that anyone who thought themselves worthy of facing the Killer of Death herself should stand before her now with their sword drawn. A great roar goes up, and by the time Jaime and Pod and Davos have returned with trenchers of boiled beef and potatoes and mushy peas and several cups of mead, the sides of the hall are crammed with cheering spectators and Arya is beating the pants off her second challenger, a poor deluded fletcher’s son from several miles south.

“Gods, she’s fast,” Jaime remarks as he hands Brienne her plate, his eyes on Arya where she’s pivoting and twirling and moving across the floor like a leaf in the wind. “Did the Faceless Men teach her to fly?”

“Could almost be magic,” says Davos, settling himself in his seat. “Maybe she met another bloody Red Priest over there.”

“She’s just talented,” Brienne argues through a mouthful of potatoes. Podrick frowns as Arya disarms her opponent and Gendry whoops the loudest over all the cheering.

“But could she fight like that with a broadsword, ser?”

“She doesn’t need to,” Brienne tells him sternly. “A good fighter plays to their strengths.”

“A good fighter plays to the _expectation_ of their strengths,” Jaime adds, his hand settling absentmindedly on the back of her neck where he strokes the shaggy tips of her short hair. “Ser Brienne looks to have the advantage in size and reach, but it’s when she turns out to be bloody quick as well that most men go down.”

“You sound as though you know, Ser Jaime,” says Davos amiably, and Brienne rolls her eyes and chomps on beef.

The bouts continue, Arya dipping in and out to drink water and wolf down meat while other fighters step into the ring and the music honks and screeches and thumps along underneath. Brienne finds herself getting into the spirit of the thing after all, cheering and clapping with the rest of them. Some of the younger boys show remarkable skill, which she knows for a fact is thanks to Jaime’s tutelage in the yard. She only points this out once though, because that’s exactly the kind of thing that will lead to days of preening and teasing and terrible impressions of her.

Brienne is just considering sending Jaime or Pod for another cup of hot milk when a sudden wave of cheering moves through the hall, and she looks up to see a bashful-looking Jon Snow stumble into the ring, followed by an equally uncomfortable-looking Hound. Both of them appear to have been pushed in by Lady Sansa, who is laughing loudly and sports red cheeks that hint at a cup or two of mead more than she’s used to consuming in one night.

“Sansa, come on now—” Snow starts to say, but the cry goes up and men push him and the Hound further into the ring, tourney swords from the last bout plucked up and pushed into their hands.

“Get him, little crow!” howls Tormund, his drinking horn in one hand and his musical horn in the other. “Show that great southern dog what we’ve really got up north!”

“Snow! Snow! Snow!” comes the chant, and Jon Snow grimaces as he turns towards the Hound, who, for his part, doesn’t look much grumpier than he usually does. Brienne imagines this isn’t the first time he’s been pulled into a tourney ring like a performing beast for the local favorite to try their luck against. She suddenly thinks of the bear in the pit at Harrenhal, shot with crossbow bolts and angry and confused, and feels a strange itch in the scars running along her neck.

“Fight well, gentlemen,” Sansa cries as they raise their swords, and Brienne catches the Hound’s face shift, just once, that same strange softness that only appears around Lady Sansa, and then he proceeds to decimate poor Jon Snow.

It’s not exactly humiliating, but it’s over too quick not to be at the very least embarrassing. Jon Snow is a talented, skilled, and practiced fighter, but he’s not big enough or quick enough to out-maneuver the Hound, whose reach is exceeded only by his brute strength. Clegane has no doubt pulled his blows for many a pretty highborn boy before, but with the eyes of Winterfell and its lady on him, he doesn’t hold back, and before there’s even time for the crowd to wonder who will win, Jon Snow’s sword clatters to the floor.

There’s an uncomfortable silence at first, during which most people can’t decide whether to look at or away from Jon Snow’s red face, and all the time the Hound is just looking back at Sansa, whose expression is stunned and open and a little too heated for Brienne’s tastes. But then Arya steps forward, smirking as only Arya Stark can, and points one thin finger at the Hound.

“It’s no fair putting you up against Jon, he’ll fight you like any other man.”

Jon Snow coughs like he’s trying to get something out of his throat, and the Hound’s eyes narrow as he looks away from one Stark lady and over to the other.

“What’s he supposed to do, fight me like a fish?”

“He’d do as well as he did just now. There’s only one who’ll fight you better, and she’s already beaten you.” And with that, Arya’s finger swings away from the Hound and suddenly Brienne finds herself looking down the arm of Arya Stark as the girl points her out in the middle of the crowd. “Ser Brienne knocked you off a mountain once. I was there, I saw. She could do it again.”

Someone in the crowd laughs and is quickly silenced by a sober friend. Nobody else moves. Brienne can feel her heart beating everywhere, in her swollen stomach, in her fingertips, in her knees, in her cheeks, the way it always does right before a fight, a real one.

“My Lady Arya, Ser Brienne is indisposed,” says Jaime, and it’s the sound of his voice that makes her move, carries her up onto her feet and away from the table and out, into the ring, where the torchlight is bright and hundreds of faces are gawking at her and her pregnant belly and a part of her thinks she must look the fool but another part of her is remembering that night months ago, in this same hall, when she knelt and Jaime laid a sword on her shoulders and then less than an hour later she was cutting down the enemy like any great knight of old, and now this is just another battle, just another chance to do what she does best, to be Brienne in spite of everything that has told her not to be.

“My thanks, Ser Jaime, but I am still able to lift a sword,” she says loudly, cutting him off, and when he tries to speak again she glances back towards him with a gaze like an arrow and she feels the impact when it hits him, his beautiful face stricken, Gods she hopes he understands.

_I am a knight, I am a warrior, if you would have me as yours and as the mother of your children then do not dishonor me when I stand here as myself._

A swell of muttering rushes across the crowd. Inside of her, the babes begin to stir, restless from adrenaline or sensing the attention on them, maybe both. Out of the corner of her eye she sees Tormund staring at her from the midst of his band members, horn hanging limp at his side, mouth wide open. Brienne rolls her wrists and feels the stretch of her tunic across her shoulders, it’s a heavy leather one, good. “That is, if I am being challenged?”

The Hound glares at her. She knows he’s angry because there’s no way for him to look good in front of Sansa now: either he disarms her beloved sworn sword who is also a massively pregnant woman, or he loses, in public, to the same sworn sword who is a massively pregnant woman. But his pride is not her problem, and behind him Lady Sansa is beaming in a way only truly delighted and somewhat drunk people can, so that’s all she really cares about.

“You did once claim you could best Ser Brienne when she was a week from the birthing bed,” pipes up Ser Davos, his white-bearded face the picture of innocence. Whistles and a few scattered cheers erupt from the crowd at that, and the Hound sets his jaw. Her spine prickles.

Oh Gods, yes, finally.

“I won’t strike at an unborn child,” he snarls. Brienne catches Pod’s wide, stunned eye and gestures at the tourney sword left behind by Jon Snow. Quick as a whip, her squire darts into the ring and picks up the sword, placing it in her hand before backing away to stand beside her tangibly tense but blessedly silent husband.

“Simply touches, up to three,” she says, swinging the sword in a wide circle as she adjusts to the weight. “I assure you, Clegane, you won’t get near enough to do anything more.”

More cheers, now chatter rising as people begin to enjoy the possibilities, place bets, fight for a better view. Brienne takes a deep breath and takes stock: yes, her body is different, unbalanced and weaker in many places and less solid than it used to be, but it’s not really so hard to let her instincts take over, place her feet and lower her center of gravity and keep her head up, and she can adjust, she’s fought in and out of armor, she’s fought on bridges and in bear pits and on top of mountains, she can do this.

The Hound hefts his sword, beady black eyes boring into hers. “You sure you want to do this, woman?”

She grins back at him, rolls her shoulders, which suddenly don’t ache quite as badly as they usually do. “I serve at the pleasure of Ladies Arya and Sansa Stark. If they would have me defend their house’s honor—”

“Forward, Ser Brienne!” crows Arya, who is now standing on the head table above her sister, possibly a little sloshed as well, her face bright and glowing as she punches the air. Sansa claps her hands and nods, not smiling anymore, grey eyes piercing both fighters as they stand there in the ring, and Brienne feels her blood go up.

“Still don’t know if I’m fighting you or your fuckin’ belly,” the Hound snarls, planting his feet. “If you fall you’ll be rolling out the door and into the snow.”

“Tell you what, Clegane,” she says as the babes kick faster and a surge of energy hits. “If you win, I’ll spend my confinement knitting you a nice warm hat.”

A surge of laughter from the onlookers.

“And if I win, you’ll knit my husband one.”

The drunk and happy onlookers howl, and the Hound doesn’t need convincing after that.

The first strike is just like before, up over her head and she has to block it. The second their swords make contact she gasps, because yes, it _has_ been too long, she’s fallen out of the practice of matching and delivering the brutal force that wins a duel, and for a terrible moment in the beginning when the Hound is chasing her backwards and her belly unsteadies her on her feet, Brienne thinks maybe she’s lost it, whatever she had before that made her Brienne, she’s let the babes consume her and it’s gone too far—

But then when he aims a sharp jab at her shoulder, she parries without thinking, instinct kicking in sharp and quick, and the rush of adrenaline from a good move floods through her and what was she thinking, of course she can still do this, she was _born _to do this, and the babies drum their heels so it feels like she has a second heartbeat.

_Let’s win this fight together._

She gets him on a lunge and goes on the attack, settling back into the use of her back foot and shoulders to get real power going. The Hound scowls at her as she pushes him back a few feet, but a moment later his sword is coming around wide and she just barely manages to knock it down and to the left but the incredible strength of the blow vibrates through her and she knows they’re _in it_ now.

It’s like being back in Renly’s camp during the melee, the first time she ever really experienced fighting in front of a crowd. People are cheering and shouting all around her, exchanging bets, calling out taunts and encouragement, but it all blends together into a long slow roar, exactly like the sound of the sea outside her bedroom window when she was a child, ebbing and flowing, powerful and distant. Only the Hound is clear before her, the opponent, the target, and if she lets her focus slip then he’ll—

He scores a hit, a sharp touch on her lower thigh. A great cry goes up—there’s no official judge but it was plain enough to see, even from the back of the hall—and Brienne grits her teeth. The Hound is smirking at her now, a great smug dog who thinks he’s got a bone away from an interloper.

As she walks off the touch, circling back around the ring, her eyes dart briefly to her corner _(when did she get a corner, Brienne of Tarth, eternal loner, how strange, how strange)._ Davos and Pod and Gendry and Arya are all on their feet, shouting at the Hound and cheering for her, waving their arms, and it feels—confusing, to be cheered for, even now, after months of living here with them, learning them, growing big with child before their eyes. They know her, they call her name, they cheer. Brienne swallows around a sudden and annoying lump in her throat.

And then she catches sight of Jaime, a little further back, and once her eyes meet his that’s all she can see, his face, pale, drawn, worried—she knows how terrified he is of something happening to her or the babes, she knows this must be driving him mad, and she feels a brief twinge of guilt, especially the fucking Hound got first touch anyway. Perhaps she should yield now, say she thought they were going for only one, go back to Jaime and hot goat’s milk—

“Just like that and you give up?” snarls the Hound, an ugly smile on his face. “What’s wrong, does the cow need to go be milked?”

The crowd laughs and shouts and boos. A hot poker of anger rams itself down Brienne’s spine, and she looks back at Jaime, and where a moment ago he looked like he wanted nothing more than for her to come away from the floor and back to him, now she sees something else there, the kind of look he’d had on his face years ago, standing on the bridge in rags, a sword clutched in his bound hands. _“If you don’t kill me, I’m going to kill you.”_

He nods at her, once. One of the babies kicks hard, right against her side, and she answers the call.

“No more than the dog needs to be beaten,” she says as she turns back to the Hound, and her sword is hot in her hands, and her back is strong, and she is _Ser Brienne of Tarth_, let him fucking try.

He does. Oh, he does. It’s a glorious fight, long and hard and focused, at once exactly the same and completely different from their battle over Arya on the mountaintop. No punches or kicks or biting of ears here, but the Hound in his full strength, fueled by devotion to yet another Stark girl, and he’s determined to win. Not many men are taller than her, but he is, and it makes fighting him very different, she has to look up in an unfamiliar way, even back then it threw her off in the beginning. He comes at her with everything he’s got, the titanic strength of the Cleganes, and he is truly brutal, unstoppable, a force of nature that no man can turn back.

She is no man.

It’s only when she feels the third touch go right through her, the impact against his ribs travel up her arm and jar her shoulder, that she realizes she’s won, and that moment is like coming back to the air after being underwater. Suddenly the Hound is the Hound again, not the center of her world, he’s a huge man drenched in sweat, just like her, and she sees his burned and battered face fall, he looks strange, he looks _young _in his disappointment, but as she returns to reality she also sees Lady Sansa standing at the head table, clapping and shouting, and the shape of both her name and the Hound’s appear on her lady’s lips, and when the Hound turns to bow his head and sees the same thing, she sees the corner of his mouth twitch upwards, and he looks young in a different way.

It’s not just Lady Sansa, Brienne realizes in another flash as she wipes her sodden sleeve across her even wetter forehead. The entire castle is shouting and cheering, and she can sense her body again, it’s singing, and they’re calling her name, _her name. _Tormund Giantsbane seems to be doing some kind of frantic celebratory jig, and Pod waves his fist and shrieks like a banshee and Arya Stark has a smile on her face that could light ice on fire, and then the rest of them, all these men and women who may have laughed at her in the past, the crowds, they clap their hands and cheer for her.

She feels strong and whole and something maybe even completely new, something like a bigger version of how she feels when Jaime tells her she’s beautiful, a pride that shines from inside and out because this is what she does best, this is her talent, and for the first time she is being cheered for it. She’s never asked for it, never even really wanted it, which makes having it somehow even sweeter.

_I could take to the birthing bed any day now, and yet I can still fight off anything that threatens me and mine._

It’s the first time she’s felt even a hint of being ready for what’s coming.

Later that night, when Pod is bringing her water and people are jostling around her and Gendry is gloating about the coins he won betting off her, she feels Jaime’s hand come back to the nape of her neck and play with the short hairs there. He leans down so that she smells his Jaime smell, leather and copper and _Jaime_, and he says close to her ear, “I was wrong, there can be no expectations, not for a wonder like you,” and she smiles and sits back in her chair and lets the babes kick their appreciation into her tired skin.

(She hopes Jaime is grateful for his hat. Maybe the Hound can ask Lady Sansa to teach him to knit.)

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, Tormund plays the bongos.
> 
> And yes, I didn't even try to pretend I wasn't ripping off Eowyn/JRRT. It's a great fucking moment and I borrowed it, okay, WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME.


End file.
